


Cognitive Dissonance

by lolwut



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Manga Spoilers, Mentions of death and general emotional agony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 06:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1129417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lolwut/pseuds/lolwut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi, for all the rumors to the contrary, knew that he was not nearly as void of human emotion as he pretended to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cognitive Dissonance

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write another happy/funny piece like Communication but I accidentally wrote emotional turmoil. I have no idea what this is I'm sorry??? Hopefully it rips your heart out (I'm sorry).

From the first sharp and sudden intake of breath which had accompanied the return of the rest of the Scouting Legion, Levi knew that he would have no time to let himself feel that day.

The captain was not a man who allowed himself the luxury of expressing much of anything very often, but that day particularly was shaping up to be the ultimate test of his resolve. The Scouting Legion had returned with two of the few people that he gave a damn about injured, and a third missing in action, with the eyes of the Legion fixed on him and awaiting direction as if he held any answers.

Levi was no fool, and he had worked in the Legion for many years. _‘Missing in action’_ was the kinder term for _‘almost certainly dead’._

He had seen Erwin’s arm – no, where it should have been, where there was nothing now – and immediately turned away from it. Someone had called out for his attention, but he had limped away from where soldiers were heaving their commander along with panicked determination in the direction of the infirmary and tended to other matters, because his stomach twisted violently at the sight and there was suddenly far too little air around him for his lungs.

He was not afraid. He had fled because he needed to clean the commander’s quarters – he was not skilled in medicine but he could clean, and he could not heal Erwin Smith if infection gripped him but he could take measures to prevent that.

It was _not_ because he was afraid.

He had seen soldiers carry in Hanji Zoe as well, and this he had been able to watch, wordless until he was spoken to.

“Sir?” A medic had addressed him and he managed to avert his eyes from the unconscious woman. “Should we alert you to changes in her condition?”

He felt that was an absurd thing to ask. He wanted to say as much, but he was not allowing himself to feel that day and it was very important that he stuck to that, so there was to be no fear, no despair, not even any anger. He nodded in place of a reply.

He did not ask if she was expected to survive, and no one offered their opinion. Levi had learned to expect the worst, so that if and when it befell him he had prepared. Yet it always seemed to catch up with him later, a second wave of stunning grief waiting to engulf him in a moment of vulnerability. Levi, for all the rumors to the contrary, knew that he was not nearly as void of human emotion as he pretended to be.

 

 

He found himself in the barren mess hall at nearly four in the morning. He had brewed himself tea and tapped the rim of the mug methodically, staring blankly ahead of him, unsuccessfully attempting to void his mind of all thoughts. The day had been filled with soldiers coming to _him,_ asking _him_ questions, waiting on _him_ for orders that weren’t coming from anywhere higher up, and he gave them with a straight face that hid his disgust with his new role. He had never claimed to be a tactician – he was a weapon, a tool, and he was good at that, he was fine with that now, even if he might have resented it in the past. Erwin was the strategist. Hanji was the bright mind.

But Erwin could die (Erwin, who was supposed to be invincible), and Hanji could die (Hanji, who was supposed to be too clever for that).

Mike _was_ dead, certainly. If they ever won the god awful war they found themselves waging, he would never see the day. There would be no world without walls for Mike Zacharius, not ever. Levi didn’t believe that they would ever truly reach the world beyond or that if humanity ever managed it that he would be alive to see it happen. He did not indulge in sentimental bullshit, though he was still guilty of staying up nights with Erwin when their demons kept them awake, listening to him read from the Arlert boy’s book, the two of them pretending that the act was more business than pleasure. Sometimes they would invite Hanji and Mike to join them, and the Scouting Legion’s elite would pile into Commander Erwin’s office and sprawl out like children. Erwin would sit at his desk as proper as ever, though usually by the end of the night he would have at least propped his feet up onto the wood, where Levi was no doubt lounging. Mike would splay out on his back against the floor, closing his eyes, and Hanji would often lean against the desk and rest her calves against his side or fiddle with Levi’s sleeve when one arm would slip down the side of the desk.

 _"_ _– oceans, vast expanses of salt water –“_

 _“Salt water,”_ Hanji would interrupt frequently with fascinated interest, but her enthusiasm was tamer on those nights, as if the atmosphere softened their edges.

 _"The smell_ _of that,”_ Mike would give the air an exploratory sniff as if the answer would come to him.  _"Bet it's nice."_

 _“Probably just smells like salty fucking water,”_ but Levi’s retorts packed less bite, _“Keep going, Erwin.”_

Hanji read too fast and Mike preferred to listen. Levi was terrible with reading and avoided it if at all possible. The Underground’s populace was vastly illiterate and he had been no exception before joining the Scouting Legion, and he disliked having his shortcomings brought to his attention more than necessary. So Erwin would read, always.

“Salty fucking water,” he whispered to himself, but truly part of him was whispering to wherever Mike might be. He would never admit that because he was no fool, and he knew that ghosts were fictitious but lonely survivors were real.

Soft footsteps unexpectedly interrupted the silence. Levi threw an absent glance over his shoulder.

“Sir,” Moblit Baner spoke up, preparing a brew of coffee across the mess hall. He looked haggard and worn, more so than Levi had ever seen him, and he was hunched over slightly. “I didn’t see you there, sorry.”

“You supposed to be out of bed?”

The man hesitated to answer.

“Right,” he tossed back, but truth be told he didn’t really care. The Legion was a military branch and Levi knew that the others were more soldiers than he would ever be, but he often felt like the only one among them who could follow a damn order.

“I’m just keeping an eye on Hanji,” he offered, and Levi could hear the popping and gurgling of the drink brewing.

“She up?” He asked, tense.

“No,” he relaxed again, in a manner that was more disappointed than relieved. “But she shouldn’t wake up alone.”

Levi wanted to scoff at that, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

“Why don’t you just fucking tell her already?” The words slipped past his lips, and he reminded himself that he was not feeling today, not anything at all. But it was too late to draw them back, and he heard an empty mug clatter across the room.

“Sir?”

“Don’t make me spell it out,” he replied gruffly, because the thought was already in the air and now he had no option but to commit to it. “She could kick the bucket any second."

He bit back anything more. He would not catch that second wind there and then, in front of Moblit Baner. He was determined not to catch it at all.

“With all due respect, sir,” Levi still had his back to the man, but he sounded like he was choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think that you and I are all that different, in this respect.”

Levi put down his tea with slightly excessive force, swallowing a gulp that was still too hot and burned his tongue. Moblit was gone when he turned in his chair.

 

 

Levi went to Erwin’s quarters that night – empty, as the man was still in the infirmary – and pulled a thick book down from the highest shelf. He was almost glad that he was alone, because he had to stand on a chair to grab it, but on second thought he could have used Mike’s company if only to reach the damn thing for him.

 

 

“Sir? Squad Leader Zoe is awake.”

Levi abandoned the paperwork that he was struggling to complete. This was Erwin’s job, not his, and he hated doing it but not more than he hated _why_ it was now his to do. He found Hanji Zoe in her own quarters, where he was certain that Moblit had transferred her himself, though the man was absent now. In the doorway he tossed his cane aside with an angry clatter which illustrated more emotion than he could hope to work from his constricted throat. Hanji looked weary and pale, but she was awake and _breathing_ and sitting up and smiling.

“Don’t fucking smile, you bitch,” he growled, and she grinned broader because she knew him and could hear past it.

“You have to catch me up,” she croaked, voice hoarse. “Before Moblit comes back. He says he won’t let me work, yet.”

“I’m not gonna fucking let you either,” he wondered briefly if Hanji could see through Moblit Baner as plainly as everyone else could. He didn’t bring it up to her though, he never did, because in a world that never failed to complicate itself Levi had no interest in making things even more so. Not when he believed that they deserved some simplicity. “But I’m gonna let you read some shitty papers for me.”

In return she did not mention – if she noticed, which he was certain that she did – the mornings when he would find his tea already prepared for him in the mess hall, or nights when he would pick out a shirt of his own from the commander’s laundry pile.

She also did not mention in that moment how he really meant _to_ him and not ‘for’ him, and he knew that he should take care of damn documents himself because he _could_ read even if he hated it, that Erwin didn’t teach him for nothing (they would work under the cover of falling darkness or rising dawn, always alone, because Erwin Smith didn't look at him like illiteracy made him any less of a man and his fingers filled the gaps between his own like necessary anchors), but he could not shake the feeling that if he stammered over another word he would crack. 

Because he and Hanji Zoe understood one another, they did not mention any of those things.

Suddenly he felt very sick, and the bags under Hanji Zoe’s eyes seemed more glaring and obvious and _wrong,_ and her smile looked weaker and her hair tamer as if she had needed someone else to brush it for her who could do better than her usual half-ass job. He became aware very suddenly of how close he had come to burying her too, and adding her wings to his morbid collection of badges.

“I hate you,” he told her, and her smile grew wider and yet sadder because to some degree it was true. He did hate them, barely, but he did, for making him care and for chipping away at him with their painful mortality.

That second wind threatened to catch him if he did not push it back, so he took a deep and steadying breath before he crossed the room and sat down on the bed and slung one arm around her. She didn’t say a word, even as he added the other, and he wondered if friendship at its most basic level was merely a mutual desire to keep the same people alive.

 

 

Levi and Hanji limped to Erwin’s quarters at half-past two in the morning, creeping around Moblit who had dozed off for the first time in far too long. They brought the book, and found Dot Pixis outside Erwin Smith’s door.

“The fuck?” Was Levi’s chosen greeting.

“Just keeping an eye on our sleeping friend, here,” the old man grinned, the sort of casual grin that he always wore whether he was being attacked or complimented. “No change since they brought him from the infirmary this morning."

"You been here all night?" 

"And day," the man replied simply, as if the act were nothing out of the ordinary. "It's best to always have an eye out for monsters under the bed, in my opinion."

Levi liked Pixis. He also wondered what the Garrison commander had to postpone to play watchdog, and he wondered if he was waiting for Levi to take the job back. Pixis did not question their motives as he stepped aside to allow them entry, which spoke volumes.

“Smell any booze?” Levi whispered as they slipped into the dark room. Hanji shook her head which he barely caught in the low light, and there was an empty silence where Mike should have confirmed or denied his suspicions. But there was no Mike, and so neither of them knew for certain.

Even in the dark Levi could see the depressions in the blankets that covered Erwin where there shouldn’t have been, where they should have cloaked bicep, forearm, hand and fingers. Hanji shuffled over to the bedside lantern and lit it, casting a gentle glow on his face.

“We’re shitty,” Levi said quietly, uneasy. Hanji ignored him. “He needs rest.”

Hanji placed the heavy book beside the lantern and leaned over his bed.

“He’s gonna act all crazy,” Levi was pleading in his own way, monotonously and straight-faced, but Hanji didn’t have mercy for him in mind. “Hanji.”

She woke the man anyway, but was gentle about it, practically cooing until Erwin Smith’s eyes fluttered open.

They were not gentle people – their careers didn’t allow for it, their world didn’t tolerate it. Yet they could have fooled a stranger into thinking otherwise in the dimly lit room, void of any witnesses, and perhaps it was only fair that they were careful with each other in a world that had never been careful with them.

Erwin muttered something unintelligible and Levi took a step back while Hanji reached forward. Levi thought that the entire scene was stupid, and it was even more stupid how badly he needed it anyway – they were not green soldiers anymore, and they had come a long way in years and character since he had struggled to sleep for fear of reliving Isabel and Farlan picked apart in front of his eyes, a long way since he had claimed Squad Leader Erwin Smith’s couch as his own personal roost and shared it with a Hanji Zoe of the past, back when they were unfamiliar with the haunting of ghosts.

His heart still ached in holes that should have long scarred over.

Erwin Smith was no longer just a squad leader and had not been for years, Hanji Zoe was less angry now but no less reckless, and he fought for them now, _with_ them instead of against them and Mike Zacharius was ~~dead dead dead dead.~~

“Hello, Erwin,” Hanji smiled, and the blonde blinked wearily, as if trying to bring her into focus. “It’s Hanji and Levi. Your two favorite people.”

“My two favorite people,” he echoed plainly, and Levi’s chest tightened until the man spotted the book on the bedside table and recognition flickered in his eyes. “Ah. We’re reading tonight.”

He smiled, and even though it was a terribly weak one he looked awake and alive, and Levi could relax.

“Levi’s going to do the reading,” Hanji volunteered him, and he wanted to object but Erwin couldn’t be expected to do his usual duty in his condition. When the blonde sat up with considerable effort, Hanji’s palms extended like safety nets, he could not possibly say no and reached over to take the book.

He knew that there was an excess of room on the right side of the bed, but still he stepped around to Erwin’s left side and sat there, where the man could rest his remaining hand on Levi’s thigh, and Levi didn’t have to look at the other side of him. Hanji crawled up onto the end of the bed, folding her legs just beyond where Erwin’s feet could reach.

He struggled over a few words, and Erwin didn’t ask where Mike was, which he was grateful for because he was not sure that he could physically speak it and Hanji looked so tired. He turned a page too quickly and ripped the edge, which bothered him with sudden intensity and he began to scour the room for tape to fix it with, slowing noticing how filthy Erwin’s quarters had become in the days that he had not visited. It took them time to talk him down from his state, but nonetheless they did, as they always did.

“It isn’t the rip that bothers you, Levi,” Erwin said, and Levi wanted to scream but did not, “or the dust.”

He _knew_ that, knew that it was only a ploy, a series of steps that required completion to trick his compulsive brain into thinking that he had some semblance of control, that he could keep their surroundings safe if only he could eradicate the germs and filth and broken things.

He looked at Erwin, with his missing limb, and sat down again because try as he might there were broken things that he could never fix.

“I don’t fucking understand why the word ‘ocean’ has a goddamn ‘c’ in it. Is this a joke?”

“Perhaps you don’t need to understand it,” Erwin suggested gently. “Just remember it for next time."

He kept reading, until Erwin had dozed off again and Hanji had retired to the couch, and Levi kissed each of the knuckles of Erwin’s remaining hand carefully as if to bless them with better luck than those the man had lost. He relieved Pixis of guard duty because it was the only kind of thank you that he knew how to give, and he was certain that he would not sleep anyway.

Levi was not sentimental and he did not believe in ghosts – he knew that they did not exist, that only lonely people did. Even though he felt terribly alone as he stood his post, he read the book aloud quietly, just in case.


End file.
